Sapper Consulting Blog

Customer Engagement: How Not To Ignore Your Biggest Fans

By Ryan Myers on Sep 26, 2017 1:00:20 AM

You’ve optimized your blog post for the search engines. You’ve filled your sales letter with enough technical details to satisfy even the geekiest of geeks. But have you forgotten about who all this compelling and motivating copy is for?

Too often, marketing materials are sleek and sexy without taking enough time to consider what the customer needs. Despite all the parties who might want (or need) to weigh in on your copy, there is really only one audience that matters: the customer.

If you focus first on customer engagement, you’ll improve connections and increase conversions. Here are three tips to keep your copy customer-centered.

The customer is the hero.

You know how to solve your client’s needs.

That’s why you build your products or offer your services. You understand how to make their lives better.

So of course you want to brag about about the fantastic transformations you can make in their lives or businesses. But that doesn’t mean you should be the focus of your copy. Instead, you want to make your client the story’s hero.

Sure, you’re the one with the expertise, and you want to show them that. But you shouldn’t be the star of the show. Instead, focus on their journey and how you can guide them to the solutions they desire.

Along the way, you’ll want to communicate in a way that makes sense to the customer. Even if they are sophisticated clients, they aren’t the expert like you are.

When we forget this point, we tend to talk over our customer’s head. We assume they know all the same jargon and technical phrases we do. But sometimes we fall victim to the curse of knowledge.

We don’t actually connect because we assume that everyone else knows as much as we do.

On the flip side of that coin, you don’t want to come across as condescending either. You want to have a conversation with your customers instead of lecturing them. So educate, but don’t come off as preachy.

Through research, conversations, and active listening, you should become an expert on your customer’s dreams and nightmares. Learn their pain points and what keeps them up at night. Find out what kind of an offer sounds too good to be true.

If you can align with their challenges, you will build your own credibility. They will come to see that you truly understand their particular problems. And if you do, they’ll believe that you’re more likely able to offer them the best solution.

So you’ll need to find out what your customer really wants out of your product or service.

If you provide lawn and landscaping services, for example, your first instinct might be to explain your three-prong system for ensuring that their lawn stays healthy and sustainable throughout the year. But what if Jeff, your potential customer, is really only concerned about keeping the Homeowners Association off his back?

He’s focused on convenience and speed. He wants to know that the grass will be cut on a regular basis, before he gets a deed restriction notice. So Jeff might not care so much about the process or how great it is for the environment.

Or it could be the exact opposite. The point is that you need to find out what your customers care about then reflect that back to them. Focus on the benefits that you can offer them, not the specific features of your process or product.

You want them to read your blog post and say, “Wow. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

You want their heads nodding along to your sales letter as they mumble, “Yes. Yes, they get me.”

In order to make that magic happen, you need to get inside their heads. You need to understand how they talk and what ideas they share.

Mine social media groups and listen in on the conversations your customers are having. Interview them to find out why they are interested in your products. Have conversations and pay close attention.

The more you sound like your clients, the more likely they are to trust you.

Bottom Line

“Remember the customer” sounds like simple advice on the surface. The truth is, too many businesses fail to communicate effectively with their clients because they are busy doing what they do best: solving problems.

But if you can do that and show it to potential customers, you’ll be ahead of the pack.